


The Butterfly and the Moth

by Anarfea



Category: Crimson Peak (2015)
Genre: Anal Play, Bondage, Character Death, F/F, Horror, Murder, Rape, Spanking, Wax Play
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-11 05:30:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16469675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anarfea/pseuds/Anarfea
Summary: “Why are you doing this?” Her breath shakes, but her voice is steady.I twist my fingers in her hair, wrenching her curls from their pins, and press her face against the wood. “Because you’re nothing. Because fucking him won’t make you mistress of this house. Because I can, and he won’t stop me.”





	The Butterfly and the Moth

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Halloween, everyone. Thought you might like a horror story. Thanks to my lovely betas beyonces_fiancee and and Fangirl_on_a_bicycle.

I lie awake in what I will not think of as my bedchamber ( _she_ sleeps in my bedchamber, _our_ bedchamber, Thomas’s and mine--except she isn’t, tonight) listening to the house groaning. Thomas has told Edith the shut doors and chimneys create a vacuum and suck the air up the chimneys, making a ghastly, mournful sound. And that’s true enough, but the ghosts groan too, and sometimes scream and gibber and whimper. Long days and nights in a straitjacket at the Sanitarium taught me to pretend not to hear or see them, but I know they’re real. Which didn’t stop me from telling Edith she was sleepwalking and having a bad dream after she ran through the halls shrieking for Thomas, carrying on about how she’d seen a ghost in the bathroom, a red wraith with a cleaver lodged in her cloven head clawing her way out of the tub and staggering down the hall, hate burning in her missing eyes, shouting at Edith to leave.

For perhaps the first time in my life, I agree with Mother, but my amusement at this irony is quashed by unease that Edith saw her. None of the other heiresses ever saw Mother, or the ghosts of their dead predecessors. My brother chose wrongly the night he snubbed Eunice at her own party, choosing instead to waltz with Edith. Edith is richer than Eunice, to be sure, but also cleverer, which is noisome. She sees entirely too much, and not just the ghosts that stalk these halls. She’s stopped drinking her tea, for one, which is why I’ve taken to poisoning her porridge.

I’d grown sick to death of her pale face and brittle blond hair popping up everywhere as she skulks about looking behind doors and into drawers better left shut. So I agreed with Thomas’s suggestion to take her with him to the depot to collect the parts for his clay harvester, as it meant getting her out of my hair, out of this house. But the truth is I want her dead, not _gone_. Her absence upsets me more than her presence. The sun set hours ago, which means either Edith and Thomas are out in the storm--their horse was stuck lame, perhaps, or lost its way in the snow. Even now they could be falling asleep in each other’s arms as the cold steals their chattering breaths. Or else they could be in the grotty room below the depot, writhing and rutting against each other beneath musty sheets. I don’t know which prospect disquiets me more.

And so I lie in bed, alone except for Enola’s wretched red ghost, who floats above me clutching my deformed baby with one arm and pointing an accusing bony finger with the other. She took it upon herself to try and save the abomination we ought to have put out in the snow. But Thomas loved the child desperately, and Enola swore she could save it. Perhaps she thought if our son lived, we’d let her live as well.

“I never promised you a thing,” I hiss. “You’ve no one to blame but yourself for your false hope.”

During the years I spent in the asylum, I taught myself not to talk to ghosts, or to the imagined version of Thomas I created to comfort me when we were apart, lest the nurses sedate me. But now, I’m alone--what if I will always be alone, what if Thomas and Edith abandoned their snowbound carriage and trudged for home, only to stumble and fall into the red snow somewhere on Crimson Peak?

The thought is so ghastly I cannot contemplate it. A whimper escapes my lips. I dig my fingernails into my palms; my thumb fidgets, searching for Mother’s ring, which is not there, which is on her blue finger as she lies in the snow--don’t think of it. And so I think instead of Thomas kissing the ring, turning over Edith’s hand and licking her palm, biting at the pulse point of her wrist, and bile rises in my throat.

“Be gone!” I shout at the thoughts, at Enola, and raise the sheet over my head. I roll over, curling against Thomas’s pillow. But sleep doesn’t come.

 

* * *

 

The next morning, I’m in the pantry fetching currants for the porridge when her chirpy voice pierces my skull.

“Lucille? Lucille, we’re back.”

My heart surges with relief and rage. I take a minute to still its pounding before stepping back into the kitchen. Edith is radiant, cheeks pink with cold or something else, her dove gray coat open at the front to reveal the sunny yellow gown Thomas had his hand up when I caught them together in the attic last week. _Our_ attic, _our_ nursery, filled with all of the carved dolls and wind up toys that Thomas made for _me_. The place we shared our first breathless kisses, quiet as the black moths fluttering against the walls.

I glance at the pot of porridge, which is now on the counter instead of the hob. “I was making breakfast.”

“It was burning. I moved it.”

“Where were you?” They retrieved the post, at least. I can see the letters stacked on the table behind Edith. I hope they are from her solicitor, that she will sign the rest of her fortune over to Thomas and that all of this will be over. My tone is sharper than I intended. “You didn’t come home last night.”

“We got snowed in. We spent the night at the depot.”

“You slept there?” Fury pulses at my temples, blurs my vision.

She lifts her chin. “What’s wrong with that, Lucille? He’s my husband.”

My nails scrape her scalp as I grab a handful of her blond ringlets and drag her towards the stove and bend her over it. I want to shove her face against the iron (see if Thomas thinks her pretty, then) but content myself with holding her close enough to heat her cheeks. Her body tenses and trembles as I draw close.

“You _fucked_ him,” I hiss the words in her ear, wonder if she’s ever heard another woman say the word out loud. They’re coarser, aren’t they, in America? But she seemed such a sheltered thing.

“He’s my husband,” she repeats, but there’s a tremor in her voice. It’s meek and unconvincing. She tries to stand, and her hips push back against my loins and something dark and wild stirs within me and I tighten my other hand around her throat.

“You may have signed your name beside his on a piece of paper, but Thomas and I are _blood_ , and blood is thicker than water and that’s all you are, _water_ we’ll boil into steam for Thomas’s machine, and when we’re through with you you won’t be anything but vapor.” She wasn’t meant to know--not until the money’s been wired, but I can smell him on her, the words spill forth before I can stop them.

“You reek of sex. He didn’t even take your dress off, did he? Just lifted it up and took you like a milkmaid in a hayloft.”

I don’t let her answer, whirling her away from the stove and into the tabletop, bending her over sharply enough to drive the air from her body. Her fingers scramble for purchase, closing around a wooden spoon. I twist her wrist until she drops it, force her arm up against her back until she whimpers, press my body against her in slow circles. She goes still.

I ruck her skirts up with my free hand. The hems are soaked with snow and clay. The toes of her boots are red with the clay-stained snow. I fling her skirt and petticoats over her back, then find the slit between her knickers.

“Did he fuck you like this?” I push two fingers inside her, half expecting to feel his sticky seed inside her, but I don’t; she’s dry inside and clenches, as though trying to push me out.

“What’s the matter? Was he too big for you?”

“Why are you doing this?” Her breath shakes, but her voice is steady.

I twist my fingers in her hair, wrenching her curls from their pins, and press her face against the wood. “Because you’re nothing. Because fucking him won’t make you mistress of this house. Because I can, and he won’t stop me.”

“He will. He’ll hate you. We’ll go far away and you’ll never see him again.”

I pull my fingers free of her cunt and fumble for a kitchen knife, press the point of the blade against the back of her neck, just hard enough to draw blood. “Would you bet your life on it?”

She tenses and then goes limp, and it’s an easy thing to grab her by her hair and pull her, stumbling, to the parlor. The disapproving portrait of Mother (damn her eyes) looks on as I cut down the curtain cord and bind Edith’s wrists, bending her elbows over her head and her wrists behind her neck so her neck and chest are exposed and helpless. I shove my handkerchief between her lips and secure it with the tail end of the rope that binds her hands, forcing it between her teeth. It wouldn’t do for Thomas to hear her scream, though he’ll be busy for a while yet, incorporating the new parts from the depot into his harvester. I pass the rope behind her head and secure the ends to her wrists. Her pulse is faint beneath my fingertips, like a butterfly with damp wings trying futilely to take flight.

I don’t desire her (she’s too pretty, too young, too _virginal_ ). But he’s claimed her, and what’s his is mine, and so _she_ is mine. I push her down, first to her knees, then to the ground, then roll her onto her back and straddle her. I pin her elbows to the floor and suck a bruise into her neck. I want Thomas to see, to know. To hurt.

Her body pushes against mine as she strains and struggles, and it only makes me want her more. I leave her on the floor, watching her wriggle to a seated position from the corner of my eye, and exchange the knife for Mother’s sewing scissors, pulled from a basket by her chair (my chair now) before the fire.

“Where do you think you’re going, you little whore?”

Her eyes flash with indignation. I snatch her forelocks and cut a piece close to her scalp. I want to clip her bald, but content myself with winding the lock around my hand and tucking it into my pocket with the keys which will never be hers. Then I plunge the scissors between her breasts and cut her bodice open.

She watches in mute horror, chest rising and falling arrhythmically. I alternate between cutting and tearing her gown until it’s rent top to bottom, prick her armpit as I cut the yellow silk all the way to her cuffs, roll her on her belly to slit the laces of her corset up the back. Blood flecks the scissors by the time I’ve cut away her divided drawers. The hair between her legs is blond. On impulse, I cut a tuft of that, too, but it’s too short to stay together and I let it fall to the floor, to scatter with the leaves and other detritus that is always blowing into the parlor from the hole in the roof of the atrium.

Her eyes are fixed on the scissors. Her face is flushed with shame or maybe cold. I’ve grown accustomed to the drafts, but she is such a frail thing now, coughing blood into her handkerchief. I wonder if there’s blood on mine, wadded into her mouth. The poison is eating her insides.

She tries to kick me when I unlace her boots. I drag her to the hearth and literally hold her feet to the fire, and she thrashes and wails as the flames lick the leather soles.

“Will you be good?”

She nods and whimpers, and I pull off her shoes and stockings. Goodness, all that fuss and they’re still damp from her trek in the snow, and her bare feet are cold. But her outburst has taught me that she fears fire, and so I snatch a candle from the mantle and set it alight.

I hold the candle beneath my chin, knowing it will throw shadows over my face, and trace the edges of the flame with my fingernail. I’ve been drawn to fire since childhood. So many times I’ve wished I could burn this cursed house to the ground and watch the ashes sink into the red pits beneath its foundations. But it would break Thomas’s heart.

The wax has begun to to melt, and I angle it over Edith’s body, dripping the liquid on her skin. Dots of white fleck her belly, and I wonder if Thomas spilled his seed here, or if he dared to spend inside her, if he was foolish enough to risk putting a pup in this bitch. The thought twists its claws into my abdomen, and I grab her ankles and bend them over her head, folding her until her knees are on the floor on either side of her head and her arse is in the air. I kneel atop the soles of her feet, feeling the bones shift beneath me. I wonder if this is how Father felt, when he stepped on Mother’s leg and snapped it beneath his boot. Invincible. Unstoppable. She stifles a little cry.

She’s obscene like this, lewd as the fore-edge illustration on the edge of the book of Japanese erotica I showed to her, hidden until I used my thumb to bend the pages. I’ve bent Edith so her blond sex and pink arsehole are exposed. I press the butt of the candle against the latter.

“Did he fuck you here?”

I know he didn’t. The expression on her face makes it clear she hasn’t had so much as a finger here before, but it’s satisfying to watch her shake her head from side to side. Maybe she’s denying he sodomized her, or maybe she just wants me to stop.

“I’ve let him have me like this. We had to be more creative, after the baby. I couldn’t risk it happening again. It’ll go easier for you if you relax.”

Her face contorts as I push the candle past her resistant flesh. I press it in slowly at first, finding the place where it bottoms out as her body curves, then thrust it, in and out. It does not slide easily. The wax sticks. Edith whimpers. In the end I push it as deep as it will go and spank her taut arse cheeks, hard, leaving pink handprints on her white skin. The impact makes the candle wax drip onto her breasts. I picture him spilling here, her lips parting, waiting for it, and I spank her harder. Thwack, drip. Thwack, drip. My palms sting. I wish I had a switch. Maybe Mother’s cane. But she’s so fetching, pinned like this, feet beneath my knees, and I don’t want to get up.

I strike her until my palms are numb and her cheeks are red. Pink red, not crimson like the clay in the vats, I wish I could stuff her in one now, watch her sink down, down--but there are papers to sign. She’s crying softly, making snuffling sounds. I wrench the candle free, move my knees off her feet, and slowly bend her legs back the right way, lower them to the floor. She lies flat on her back, sobbing in relief.

“There, there.” I pull the knotted rope from between her teeth, untie her hands, rubbing at her raw wrists. “There, my sweet. It’s over. I had to punish you. You fucked him. And then you came home and you were insolent with me. That couldn’t go unanswered. But it’s over now.”

She coughs, spits out the handkerchief. There’s a bright spot of blood in the middle of the white linen square.

“You want to kill me. You killed all the others. The only reason I’m alive is because you don’t have my money yet.”

“Yes, aren’t you a clever girl. You figured everything out after I told you.”

“Thomas and I brought the papers. I won’t sign them. I’ll tell him what you did to me, and then we’ll leave together, and you’ll rot alone in this place.”

“Thomas can’t leave me.”

“He will.” She sits up, then leaps to her feet with more agility than I thought she had in her, and runs from the parlor, into the hall. I pick my skirts up and chase her but she is already out the front door, running naked through the snow.

“Thomas!” She screams into the fog. “Thomas!”

He’s at the harvester, of course. The device is hoary with frost. It’s running, the steam driven wheels turning the toothed shovels on their chains. It was built to dredge the red clay up from beneath Allerdale Hall, but it isn’t digging yet, just rattling and groaning like a living thing.

“Edith?” The machine rumbles and grates to a halt with the flip of a lever. “Dear God, Edith! What are you doing, naked like this in the cold?” Thomas pulls off his overcoat, throws it around her shoulders, covering her white body and her yellow hair.

“Lucille!” she sobs. “Lucille.”

“She was in the bath,” I run up beside both of them. “Thought she saw a ghost.”

“Let’s get back inside, Edith, you’re freezing.”

“No! No, we have to go!” Edith wails.

“Not in this weather.” Thomas puts his arm around her. “Come on.” He pulls her towards the house. She goes reluctantly, and I follow a few steps behind.

He strokes Edith’s hair. “You poor thing. Let’s get you warmed up.”

“I’ll make tea,” I say, and head for the kitchen.

I do actually make a pot. I also open all the post, find the letters from her solicitor, and carry them to Edith’s bedchamber with the tea tray, together with a pen for her to sign the papers and a knife, just in case.

The two of them are crouched in front of the fire, Edith wrapped in a quilt, Thomas holding her hands. He lets go and rises to his feet when I enter the room. His face is deadly white.

“Edith says…. Edith says you….” He can’t finish.

I set the tray on the low table. “Say it, Thomas.”

“She says you ravished her.”

A smile crosses my lips unbidden. “What does it matter what Edith says?”

“She has a bite mark at her neck. Rope burns on her wrists.”

“I’m not denying it. I’m just asking why it matters.”

Edith looks up. “You’re a monster.”

“So is he. Thomas married you with the intention of murdering you after you signed over all your money. And now,” I hand the pen to Edith, “You’re going to sign these.” I thrust the knife to Thomas, “and then he’s going to kill you.”

“Lucille!” Thomas has the audacity to look scandalized. He refuses the knife, pushing my arm away. “No. She will live. You’re not to touch her.”

I’m taken aback. “You’re ordering me?”

“Edith and I are going to leave Allerdale Hall. As soon as the weather clears. In the meantime, we will stay here and you will stay downstairs, away from us.”

It hits me like a blow, and I stagger from the force. She can’t be right. He can’t leave me. “You can’t mean this.” The words come out in a whisper.

“I can. I do. Lucille, look what we’ve become. What you’ve done.” He gestures to Edith.

I stare at her. This wraithlike, pale thing, huddled beneath the quilt. She is nothing, a dying butterfly, beauty already faded by poison and fear. “You can’t love her.”

He takes her hand. “I do.”

She squeezes his fingers, looks up at me with wide, triumphant eyes.

I tear my gaze from hers to him. “You promised.” I’m pleading. I hate it. “You promised you would not fall in love with anyone else.”

“Yes, but it happened. It happened and… this happened and you and I…. This day had to come, Lucille. We’ve been dead for years, you and I in this rotting place.”

“You love her more than me.”

“I don’t love you anymore, Lucille.”

I stab him. The knife bites deep into the flesh of his shoulder.

He stares down at it, stunned.

Edith screams.

I sob and stab him again, and again--She tries to pull me off of him but it’s too late. I bury the knife in his face--the blade punctures his high cheekbone and sticks fast. Try as she might, Edith cannot pull it free. She cries out in dismay and then throws up her hands.

“Lucille,” says Thomas. He looks at me, gaze full of hurt, blood welling at the corner of one eye.

I’m crying. The tears are hot, running down my face. The wounds I’ve given him are fatal. I never imagined this. All the horror, all of the murders I committed were for love, and now that love is bleeding out on the sitting room floor.

“You murdered him!” Edith whirls on me and her voice is guttural, it is a roar, primal and full of a rage I’d never have given her credit for. She lunges for the poker at the side of the fireplace, grabs it and swings wildly. I put my arm up to shield myself from the blow, as I’ve done on countless occasions before--I took so many beatings from Mother, to shield Thomas.

She hits me again, then thrusts, wielding the poker like a rapier. I dodge out of the way and stop by Thomas, step on his forehead to pull the knife free of his face. Blood spills from the wound as the bone releases the blade.

Edith thrusts again. I grab the poker and pull it forward, bringing her close enough to stab, but she lets go and dances away.

Now I have both weapons, the knife in my right hand and the poker in my left. I throw the poker across the room and lunge with the knife. She turns on her heel and flees, running naked from the room to the balcony. I run after her, knife in hand, desperation pounding through my veins. Even if I kill her, she’s won. Thomas lies dead, there’s nothing for me, not even if she signs the papers, nothing but blood and clay and snow and this dying house with its ghosts.

Edith runs for the lift. She rattles the doors, jerking them open. I grab her by the hair, pull her back to keep her from climbing inside, drag her away from the doors, alongside the balcony. She shrieks, grabbing at my wrist, pulling wildly, trying to tear free. I let her go and push, hard, and she falls backwards over the balcony railing, landing with a sick thump on the floor two stories below.

I run down the stairs, knife still in hand, to find Edith crumpled below, lower leg bent at a frightful angle. Her eyes are closed.

I drop the knife and pull her into my arms. She’s light as a child. I carry her to the lift, shifting her weight onto my hip as I open the door and pull it open, then step inside. I ride up two stories with her in my arms. She whimpers and stirs, but does not fully wake.

I carry her into the bedchamber, lay her out across the bed. Her white body is mottled purple gray with bruises from where she fell.

“Thomas?” she asks.

I suppress a snarl. That she’d dare to say his name, after what she did to him.

I open the cupboard and pull out the spare sheets, rip them into strips, and bind Edith’s wrists to the bedposts. I bind her good ankle, too. The broken leg I leave free. The bone needs to be set. I watched the doctor set Mother’s leg after Father broke it. That little knowledge will have to do. I climb onto the bed, straddling her, and grasp her leg with both hands, just below the knee and just above the ankle. I can see the crooked bone beneath her muscles, and I twist and wrench until it seems straight.

Edith shrieks and tries to kick but I hold her fast, sitting on her body, holding the bones in place until her screams turn to sobs and she stills.

“Your leg is broken,” I tell her. “Don’t move it.”

She whimpers and sobs. I wrap the limb tight with the strips of sheet. It will have to suffice until I can find a splint.

I leave Edith tied to the bed and go to Thomas’s workshop. After a few minutes, I find suitable pieces of wood, light and strong. I stop in the kitchen on the way back and make tea, adding laudanum this time instead of poison. I carry it and the wood upstairs.

There are fresh tears on Edith’s face but she’s stopped crying. She glances at me when I come in, then looks up at the ceiling. I set the tea and the strips of wood on the nightstand beside her.

“It’s got laudanum in it,” I tell her.

Her brow furrows. “Why didn’t you kill me?”

I’m not entirely sure, so I don’t answer. Instead I bring the teacup close.

“Sit up,” I demand.

She struggles up onto her elbows, pulling the ties that bind her taught.

I hold the tea beneath her chin and she sips the hot liquid slowly, throat bobbing as she swallows. I keep holding it, watching her, until she finishes it all and slumps back onto the pillows.

“Will you stay still while I splint your leg or do I have to tie you tighter?”

“I’ll stay.” There’s fear in her voice, but also resolve. She twists her hands in the bedsheets, holding them tight, as I fit the wooden pieces to the sides of her leg and tie them in place with a second layer of improvised bandages. Her breath is hard and fast between clenched teeth, but she does not cry out. I’m quietly impressed.

After, I fetch a quilt from the cupboard and lay it on top of her, tucking it in under her chin. “Sleep, now.”

Her brows knit with confusion but her eyes drift closed. The laudanum has done its work.

 

* * *

 

Thomas is heavier than Edith. I have to drag him from the sitting room to the lift, awkwardly folding him so he’ll fit inside. Together we ride down, down, to the pits. The great big vats of clay that fill the basement are covered with wooden lids, padlocked to keep things in as well as out. I unlock one of them with the key from my belt. The lid is heavy, but I pull it aside until the pit is open like a great red wound.

I pull Thomas’s body across the floor until he lies alongside it. I’m sweating beneath my gown, panting from exertion, but I hoist him up and over the rim. His eyes are open. They stare at me accusingly. A trail of blood runs from his right eye like a tear, just above the wound I left in his cheek. I kiss it. Then I tip him into the vat.

He sinks slowly, the red earth swallowing him up. It’s like a return to the womb; he sinks down into the liquid, which rises slowly to cover his white face. His black hair floats around him before it too, is submerged in red.

For few moments, I want nothing more than to climb in after him, to sink down beside him and pull him into my arms and lie entwined with him forever. We were always meant to die together, Thomas and I.

But I don’t. I close the lid over the red vat and lock it again. Some doors should stay shut.

I take the lift back up, close my eyes and let its familiar rattle calm me as I ride back up the three stories to the bedchamber.

Edith is asleep. I climb beneath the quilt and lie beside her, curling against her naked body for warmth. My eyes hurt and my limbs are heavy and it isn’t long before I’m asleep, too.

I wake to the sound of Edith weeping. Her leg must be paining her. I should have brought the laudanum with me.

I go down to the kitchen and make more laudanum-laced tea and reheat the porridge from this morning. Then I carry a bowl of the latter and a cup of the former upstairs.

Edith has stopped crying. She is laying on her back in bed. I realize her good leg and her arms are still tied to the bedposts. I set the tray down and pause to untie her (where would she go, with a broken leg?) before offering her the tea. She curls both her hands around the cup (Mother’s ring, the one Thomas wed her with, is still on her finger) warming them, then drinks deep.

“You should eat something,” I tell her, offering the porridge. I take a bite of it first, showing her. “It isn’t poisoned, I swear.” I stir the porridge and lift a spoonful to her lips as though she were a baby.

She opens up obediently and takes a bite, chews it slowly, swallows.

“Why are you doing this?” she asks, for the second time today.

“Because you’re all I have, now,” I tell her. “We’re each of us all the other has in the world.”

I spoon-feed Edith the rest of her porridge. Then I climb back into bed with her and pull her into my arms, hold her until she drifts into laudanum induced sleep.

Thomas’s ghost floats overhead. His wraith isn’t red but white, save for the blood running down his cheek.

“Be gone,” I whisper, and raise the sheet over our heads. I kiss the nape of Edith’s neck, placing my lips to a small blond curl, and close my eyes,  cradling her hand in mine, thumbing the ruby on her finger, listening to her breath. Sleep comes.


End file.
